


waves

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [7]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Grief/Mourning, Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22875646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Greg knew it would be hard, raising a child alone.  He never knew it would bethishard.
Relationships: Greg Universe & Steven Universe, Rose Quartz/Greg Universe
Series: Starshine Over Beach City: Moments from Steven Universe [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523993
Comments: 24
Kudos: 130
Collections: Steven Universe Completed Recommended Reads





	waves

They say the day your child is born is the happiest day of your life. One you’ll never forget. They say a lot of things, Greg thinks later. **  
**

He doesn’t remember much of Steven’s birth at all. Just… flashes.

Late afternoon summer sun, drenching the van with gold. Rose’s hands, soft and large and powerful, tightening around his. Her smile is a little pained, a little frightened, so excited. Tears in her dark eyes. Is it now? Before he can form the words to ask her, she kisses him, and it’s over.

He doesn’t know what he expected. None of them knew how it would happen. Rose is there one second, bright and alive and so, so beautiful.

And then she’s gone – there’s only light, light, light, a pink flare shocking in its suddenness –

There on the blankets, small and round and squalling, is Steven. Rose’s gem glows from the curve of his belly, then fades. Steven’s blotchy face screws up into a wail that pierces the silence. Greg stares. The baby is so, so beautiful.

For a moment, Greg doesn’t know what to do. _Rose._ Her absence is a void that crushes, his chest is caving in without her, how does he breathe, how does he do anything –

Steven’s hands are angry fists. His legs wheel. His tiny feet kick jerkily. And he cries.

Shaking, Greg wraps him in the blanket. The baby stares out at him with dark eyes, his face relaxing beneath the black curls plastered to his forehead. Greg clumsily picks him up and holds him to his chest. The baby quiets and settles against him, and Greg kisses the top of his head with a sob. 

Flashes. 

He fumbles for the pink onesie Rose liked most. It’s a little too big for Steven. He cries as Greg cleans him up, cries as Greg gently directs his arms through the sleeves. 

Greg tries to remember the directions for formula. He messes up the first three bottles, too hot, the formula mixed unevenly. The fourth he holds for Steven, and the baby feeds hungrily, gazing up at him with those dark trusting eyes. 

_She’s gone. Rose is gone._ He’s so cold in the summer heat. Is that why he can’t stop shaking?

The sunset’s brilliant rays play on the wall of his van. He remembers how much Rose loves, _loved,_ the Mr. Universe logo. Remembers the way her large hand splayed against the paint when he pushed her up against the wall and kissed her. How she grinned.

_It isn’t true._ She’s away right now, busy on a gem mission, that’s how she got this baby, right? He’s mistaken somehow, confused, and any minute now she’ll knock on the van door and there’ll she be –

Voices, visiting. Not hers. Familiar. No, no, how can he explain, there wasn’t time, they didn’t know – 

“Rose? Greg?” The van door opens and the light spills in.

He can’t speak. Mouth isn’t working right. 

Mechanically he turns to the bassinet and lifts up the sleeping baby. They stare, and Greg sees their world change in an instant.

Pearl, wide-eyed, mouth dropping. She _screams_. Keeps screaming. It’s a sound that tears through him, keening and terrible; she cries on her knees on the pavement with her face in her hands, and Greg knows she will never forgive him, not for this, not for all of it. 

Amethyst, nudging the baby, whispering at first, voice rising louder and louder into a ragged yell, _Rose, Rose, Rose Rose Rose ROSE!_

Garnet leaning against the van to stay upright, tears leaking from all three eyes, hoarsely muttering that she should have known, they should have come earlier –

Steven crying in the commotion, Greg laying him back in the bassinet; what if he drops him, his hands won’t stop trembling, how is he supposed to _do_ this….

Just flashes.

***

The days blur. It’s hard to keep track of them. It’s with a shock he realizes that Steven is a month old.

There’s plenty to keep him busy, he supposes. Beach City might be small, but there’s a surprising amount of tourists passing through in the summer months, their cars dirty with sand and exhaust. Greg gets a decent amount of work. More tips than he used to. He suspects the tips aren’t for the sad sack with the swollen eyes and the receding hairline, but probably have something to do with the sleeping baby strapped to his chest.

In the downtime he sits with Steven, pulling him out of the baby carrier and cradling him in the crook of one arm and just… marveling. Every day he finds a new wonder. Today it’s the shadow of his long black eyelashes against the curve of his plump little cheek. Yesterday it was his small hand, fierce and mighty curled around Greg’s index finger. He can hardly bear to think of what it will be tomorrow.

Sometimes the downtime is different. He’ll hear a song out of a car radio, one of those silly human things that made her laugh, and he’ll hear her voice singing along – but sometimes he _doesn’t_ hear it, sometimes he’s afraid he’s _forgetting_ it, and he sinks down to the ground behind the car wash and bawls. Steven cries with him. And he realizes in those moments that Steven will never know why he’s crying, he’ll never fully understand who Rose was, and he cries harder.

But those moments slowly, slowly become fewer. One morning he doesn’t think of her immediately upon waking; it’s ten minutes after he checks on Steven that he remembers, feeling a familiar pit deep in his stomach. Another day, busy at the car wash, he doesn’t cry at all. It’s freeing and frightening both.

He keeps going. It’s not as if he has a choice.

He closes up the car wash after the day’s rush, takes Steven for a walk in his stroller. He swings by Vidalia’s to bug her for baby advice for their weekly meeting. He can tell she doesn’t know what to say about Rose, so Greg doesn’t mention her, and Vidalia doesn’t ask. Instead they talk about Sour Cream, and Steven, and how to get babies to sleep through the night. Vidalia mentions colic and diaper rash. Greg shrugs. Steven always seems fine, his skin pink and healthy, his stomach settled. He wonders what role Rose’s gem plays, pink and gleaming in the baby’s belly.

He makes up a little routine for the two of them. On the evening walk he stops by the market for more formula, picks up dinner at Fish Stew Pizza. He was never into cooking much before, and he sure as hell doesn’t have the energy for it now. It keeps him going, anyway.

On the boardwalk people smile, and peer into the stroller, and coo at the baby. Steven stares up at them with wide eyes, looking from face to face in the deepest concentration Greg’s ever seen. “You like people, huh?” he murmurs, and Steven gives him that _look_ , and he melts.

He feels all right like this. Like a real person.

But every night he eventually pulls away from the real people and stands on the boardwalk, looking over the top of the stroller to the temple beyond. He tells himself the wheels would just get stuck in the sand, and he turns aside. He can’t face them again. Not yet.

Some evenings he climbs to the top of the hill, lays on his back in the grass, Steven nestled against his chest. He watches the sun set in the distance. Somewhere out there the old farm sees the sunset, too, and Greg wonders about the DeMayos, where they are, what they’re doing. He wonders if his old man ever held him like this on a summer night in the twilight, ever marveled at his small hand. 

He climbs down the hill in the deepening dusk, Steven safe in his arms, and he prepares for another night.

***

Nights… aren’t good. This one’s no different.

He’s set up a little cot in the back of the carwash beside a little crib. He doesn’t mind the van for himself, but a baby needs a real crib, not a crate in a passenger seat. 

He tries to sleep with one hand dangling over the edge of the crib, fingertips brushing against Steven’s chest as it rises and falls. Tries to sleep on the saggy cot, each position more uncomfortable than the last. Tries to sleep in the summer heat, lingering heavy on the air.

Tries to sleep when he knows she’s gone.

And there it is, the sledgehammer: the agony that leaks around the daylight’s edges, the shock that tears the air from his lungs every time it hits again. 

He gasps with it, the weight of missing her. _How,_ he howls silently into the night, _how can Rose be **gone?**_ It’s a reality that makes no sense, a hollow wound bigger and darker and more confusing than anything he’s ever felt in his life, and he thought he was ready, she told him it would be worth it, she told him so many things –

It’s a full five minutes before he realizes Steven’s stirring, making soft cooing sounds in the crib. The sear of missing Rose fades blissfully away. _It’s a wave_ , he thinks blearily, it crashes over him and drowns him every time, and every time, somehow, he comes up breathing once again.

The baby cries. Greg turns to him, eyes blurry with tears as he drinks in his angry pink face and those fierce little fists. He picks him up and rocks him on the flimsy cot. “It’s okay, little man, it’s okay. I got you.” 

Once, Rose had _him_.

He tries to ride out the next wave, focusing on Steven cuddled in his arms. He presses a trembling kiss to the top of his son’s head. The wave crashes again; he drowns again. This time he cries so hard he hiccups, cries so hard Steven echoes him with a ringing shriek. 

“Rose,” he sobs. It strikes him again that it isn’t _fair_ – she should have been here, she should have felt the weight of their baby in her soft arms – she should have been able to see those long eyelashes, those dark curious eyes – and why _couldn’t_ she, why couldn’t she, dammit –

But Steven needs him. So he does the things he needs to, tears still streaming down his face. He changes the baby. Dresses him in a new pink onesie, the shade as soft as Rose’s hair. Tries to rock his son back to sleep, hoping Steven can’t sense the emptiness spiraling deeper and deeper through him, cutting to the core. The baby whines in soft tired noises.

_What did we do?_ he asks the darkness.

He clicks on the light, sleep vanished again. He paces with Steven in his arms, walks in circles around the tiny room with the peeling linoleum and faded car posters, and he sings nonsense lullabies in minor keys.

***

The days begin to shorten, summer’s hold on the town starting to slip into autumn. Steven’s getting bigger, outgrowing the newborn clothes. Vidalia gives him a few of Sour Cream’s hand-me-downs. Greg tries them out, but Steven looks strange in them, little button-up outfits in blue and white. Greg picks up a few more pink onesies in the next size up.

The days get a little better. The waves still come. Sometimes he can even see them coming from a distance, can hunker down and prepare for them. Sometimes, though, they’re still a surprise. Like the dreams.

_“Greg,” she laughs, pink hair dancing in the breeze. She’s adorned in pink flowers, a glorious goddess. He reaches out to hold her hand, and he remembers._

_“Rose, you – you’re not supposed to be here,” he says in a small voice. He feels guilty for pointing it out._

_Her laughter fades. The flowers wilt, petals dropping to the grass beneath her bare feet. “I know,” she says softly. Then a mischievous grin. “Don’t tell anyone. Promise?”_

_Despite himself, he grins back._

He jerks awake from the dream, blinking back tears. The morning is still in the blue-black pre-dawn, and he knows Steven will be waking up soon. Might as well get up now anyway.

He mixes Steven’s bottle, tests the temperature. Still a little warm. He looks back to the sleeping baby, then picks him up. Steven breathes quietly against him.

It only takes a few moments to get together Steven’s diaper bag and bottle, and settle him into the car seat in the van. He doesn’t know where he’s going, not exactly, but he feels restless. 

He drives through the town’s empty streets in circles until he remembers the dream, Rose in flowers. He heads for the hill as the sun begins to crest the horizon, far over the edge of the sea.

Steven drowses in Greg’s arms, waking up as they reach the top of the hill. The sun spills over the waves below. Greg throws down a blanket for both of them, and settles down on the grass.

“Hey there, Schtu-ball,” he says as Steven fusses. He reaches for the bottle, tests it again. Perfect temperature. He holds it to Steven’s mouth, and the baby drinks hungrily, watching him all the while.

“Did I ever tell you about this place?” he murmurs. With his thumb, he brushes a stray lock of hair from Steven’s forehead. He’s so _small._ Yet he’s already grown so much.

“Of course not,” Greg answers. He looks out over the water. “You know, your mom and I used to come out here all the time. We’d sit in the flowers while I wrote her songs. She said that in all her years in Beach City, the ocean never changed, but everything around it did. She thought that was beautiful.” Steven flailed his fists in agreement.

“Yes, she’d think you were beautiful, too,” says Greg. His voice cracks. “You’re perfect, Steven. You’re everything we hoped for. And I’m sorry – I’m sorry you’ll never get to meet her.”

The tears burn, a familiar sting as the morning light grows. “I loved her so much. I always will. You don’t just _stop_ when someone dies. You keep loving them, and that’s why it’s so hard.” Little feet kick against his chest; he breathes faster, swallowing.

“Rose was incredible. I loved her laugh. Her smile. The way she sang. Just… everything about her. I wish you could really understand what kind of person she was.” He sighs. “She saved the Earth, you know. Not only that, she _loved_ the Earth. And she loved me.” His breath shudders. Steven looks at him in concern, and he straightens up. “She wanted you more than anything. I hope you always know that, kiddo.”

Steven finishes the bottle and Greg sets it aside, holding him upright in his lap. He rubs his back, the action now practiced, natural.

“I miss you, Rose,” he whispers. 

The sunlight sparkles on the water, white and gold dancing on the sea’s surface. The light edges the grass of the hilltop, outlines Steven’s dark fluffy hair. Greg lifts him from his lap. He turns the baby around to keep the sun from getting in his eyes, giving him a watery smile.

Steven searches his face, his tiny hands still, his eyes intent. Then his mouth lifts in a smile, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and he _laughs_.

“Steven–” Greg gasps. “You – you _smiled!_ ”

Steven flaps his hands in delight, letting out a giggle. And Greg laughs through the tears, laughs on the green grass, laughs amid the pink flowers unfurling in the morning light. He holds his son, remembering Rose’s voice, treasuring it.

Steven’s laughter is the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Greg Universe, okay???? Thanks to @followerofmercy on tumblr/AO3 for some help with this one.


End file.
